Gary Adlestein

I began making films in 1970. In 1975, along with Jerry Orr and Jerry Tartaglia, I co-founded Berks Filmmakers, Inc. still functioning today [2010] in Reading, Pennsylvania as a showcase for experimental film and video. My films tend to be either spontaneously shot, in-camera- edited, sync-sound (or silent) Super 8's often "about" places, nature, travel, friends and the everyday miracles of life ("The films ... reveal a wonderful sense of the qualities of the medium and an appreciation for capturing small, resonant moments." - Kathy Geritz, Curator, Pacific Film Archives), or they become 16mm, scored and manipulated, optical printer works always lyrical, sometimes ecstatically so. I have been fortunate to show my work at numerous festivals (eg., Black Maria, Athens, Three Rivers) and experimental media venues (LA Filmforum, San Francisco Cinematheque, Pacific Film Archive, Millennium; Orgone, Moviate); in 2000 I did a Cineprobe at MoMa, NYC and a number of my small gauge works were in the "Big as Life: An American History of 8mm Films" also at MoMA, 1982-2001).

In 1990, I discovered the affordable image manipulation potential of consumer video, especially its mixing, wiping and colorizing technology (like optical printing in real time). Since then I have been making tapes specifically designed for projection, thereby carrying over something of the scale and attention to surface detail and texture that characterized my films.

"The most important aspect to Adlestein's approach to video is that it is irrefutably and defiantly filmic. ... It is sublimely tactile where most videos tend to be impersonally cool and hard. ..."
-Albert Kilchesty, film curator and author

"Your work was such a treat - so lyric and voluptuous in color."
-Donna Cameron, filmmaker

Finally, my experimental films/tapes are attempts to see something of beauty and truth not only with but - as Blake admonished - THROUGH the eye (my eyes, I's, camera, film, tape, printer, mixer, computer, etc.) and to share this experience with the viewer.